Seasons

Question Results

Whose The Seasons for solo piano begins with months subtitled 'At the Fireside' (January), 'Carnival' (February) and 'Song of the Lark' (March)?

Response:

Alexander Glazunov

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky

Feedback:

Correct. The piece was written in 1876 and each of the twelve sections has an epigram. November's is 'In your loneliness do not look at the road, / and do not rush out after the troika./ Suppress at once and forever the fear of longing in your heart.'

Sergey Rachmaninov

Score 1 of 1

Question:

And whose The Seasons ballet, first performed in St Petersburg in 1900, has characters called Winter, Frost, Ice, Hail and Snow?

Response:

Igor Stravinsky

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky

Alexander Glazunov

Feedback:

Correct! The ballet opens with a Winter scene of jollity with the characters Winter, Frost, Ice, Hail and Snow and a cluster of snowflakes. Two gnomes enter and light a fire, which puts an end to the party.

Score 0 of 1

Question:

Which eponymous character is chosen as 'May King' in a 1947 opera by Britten?

Response:

Billy Budd

Albert Herring

Peter Grimes

Feedback:

It's 'Albert Herring', a comic opera set in Loxford in Suffolk.

Score 0 of 1

Question:

Which ballet, premiered at the Bolshoi in November 1945, includes dances by the Spring Fairy, Summer Fairy, Autumn Fairy and Winter Fairy?

Response:

Prokofiev's 'Cinderella'

Adam's 'Giselle'

Feedback:

It's Prokofiev's 'Cinderella'. Ballerina Galina Ulanova danced the title role in the first performance.

Tchaikovsky's 'Sleeping Beauty'

Score 0 of 1

Question:

'April is in my mistress' face' and 'Now is the month of Maying' are two of the best-known madrigals by which British Composer?

Response:

William Byrd

Feedback:

It was Thomas Morley. The rest of the text for 'April is in my mistress' face' is: 'And July in her eyes hath place;/ Within her bosom is September,/ But in her heart a cold December.'

Nicholas Yonge

Thomas Morley

Score 0 of 1

Question:

Which composer depicted the stormy British landscape in his orchestral tone poem November Woods in 1917?

Response:

Arnold Bax

Frederick Delius

Feedback:

It was Arnold Bax. He was inspired to write the poem after he and his lover, the pianist Harriet Cohen, took shelter from the autumn weather in a wood in Buckinghamshire.

Vaughan Williams

Score 0 of 1

Question:

The line 'In the valley blooms the Spring' from a poem by Adolph Boettger is believed to have inspired the subtitle of whose First Symphony in 1841?

Response:

Mozart

Beethoven

Feedback:

It's Schumann's First Symphony, which is subtitled 'Spring'

Schumann

Score 0 of 1

Question:

Violinist Gidon Kremer's Eight Seasons CD in 2000 combined Vivaldi's Four Seasons with which composer's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires?

Response:

Heitor Villa-Lobos

Ástor Piazzolla

Gerardo Matos Rodríguez

Feedback:

Kremer performed Piazzolla's 'Four Seasons of Buenos Aires', a set of four tango compositions

Score 0 of 1

Question:

'The garden is in mourning. Cool rain seeps into the flowers. Summertime shudders, quietly awaiting his end.' In which 1948 work for soprano and orchestra do these lines by Hermann Hesse appear?

Response:

Oliver Knussen's 'Songs for Sue'

Feedback:

It's Strauss's 'Four Last Songs'. These lines describe the month of September.

Richard Strauss's 'Four Last Songs'

Ravel's 'Shéhérazade'

Score 1 of 1

Question:

Which character in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess opens the opera with 'Summertime'?

Response:

Clara

Feedback:

Correct! In the story, Clara is the wife of a fisherman, Jake, and she's singing a lullaby to her baby.

Bess

Lily

Free Newsletter

Email: *

By clicking on the 'Sign Up!' button below, you are agreeing to Classical-music.com's terms & conditions. You can opt-out at any time.

We use cookies to improve your experience of our website. Cookies perform functions like recognising you each time you visit and delivering advertising messages that are relevant to you. Read more here